July 23, 2010

Dept. of Dumb Motherfuckers: Global Warming Edition

Bowing to political reality, Senator Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat and majority leader, said the Senate would not take up legislation intended to reduce carbon emissions blamed as a cause of climate change, but would instead pursue a more limited measure focused on responding to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and tightening energy efficiency standards.

“We know where we are,” Mr. Reid told reporters after reviewing the state of energy legislation with Senate Democrats and administration officials. “We know that we don’t have the votes.”

Let's summarize. The U.S. political system is unable to address the existing, nascent consequences of anthropogenic climate change, much less its long-term future consequences. It's only able to react to absolutely undeniable complete catastrophes by dealing with their effects, not even their causes.

Comments

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well the really stupid thing is that under a three year old supreme court decision the EPA is required to institute potentially draconian limits on carbon emissions. they are expected to do it later this year. the cap-and-trade scheme was a way to use market forces to regulate carbon rather than resorting to an old fashioned top-down approach. because industry lobbied to kill the cap-and-trade bill, they are now facing much more serious limits on their emissions. (talk about dumb motherfuckers)

on the other hand, they'll probably just lobby hard to amend the clear air act to add an exemption of carbon from the definition of pollutants, effectively overturning the supreme court decision.

i just can't get over how the supreme court ruling, and the threat it posed to american industry unless the climate bill was passed, didn't get even cursory mention in the debate over the bill.